Behind The Artworks: Orelisk - The Underworld Obscura (2023)

Northern Michigan is a trove of the impoverished, the remnants of former successes and failures dotting the landscape equally. Daily I drive, seeing these repressed memories of civilization. It honestly borders on obsession for me, these derelict sites. Forgotten, lifeless, husks begging to be filled with the histories since deprived.

 

Like an exercise to enrich my surroundings with dark intrigue, I feed them history and new life. It’s not archaeological, there are no Roman settlements buried beneath the dirt, it’s more emotionalized; I commiserate the lost livelihoods of those before me, bringing their suffering into a false sense of remembrance, one that adds some value to their loss. The painter responsible for both The Underworld Obsucra and Mold, my own mother, does this same task in her own way.

 

I’ve found Debra Payne’s paintings to evoke much the same emotion as the structures themselves. While the additional post work gifts that extra sense of dark brutality, a signature of black metal; the original works remain my own personal evocation, hanging on my walls away from the sight of my listeners.

The future imagery of Orelisk is expected to remain in tow with this vision. It’s inexorably linked to Northern Michigan, as much as the destitute scars of humanity in the art. These too, like myself and my art, will crumble and rot away. Yet the impacts, the emotions, the false histories we’ve created and shared, will remain in some degree, I expect.